


As Wind Is to Fire

by kho



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Canon Rewrite, F/M, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 05, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 02:02:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13753914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kho/pseuds/kho
Summary: “I want to know everything you’ve got on Desert Wolf,” Braeden says without any kind of lead up.  No will you help me, no can you please.  Just a demand.  “I know you’re looking for her.”Season 5, retold through communication between Derek and Stiles, specifically and especially dealing with Donovon.





	As Wind Is to Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to @accol-fics for handholding, beta reading, mutual squeeing about "okay but season 5 if they showed him staying in touch with DEREK!", nitpicking of my horrendous Tenses Debacle of 2018 (i started with one and switched midway through oops). LOVE YOU BB!
> 
> This fic -- It is meant to follow at least 5a canon pretty closely. In the third episode of season 5 Stiles mentions receiving a text from Braeden about Desert Wolf, so... in my mind, this is actually what happened and how it took place.
> 
> Eventual Sterek. Probably eventual NC17 but for now mature for language.

> _ "Absence is to love as wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small and kindles the great." _
> 
> _Roger de Bussy-Rabutin_
> 
>  

* * *

 

 

The phone rings at 10 o'clock on a Thursday. Stiles answers it with a mouthful of Doritos and a garbled “h’lo”.

“Stiles?”

Female, Stiles notes. Not Lydia or Malia, he immediately thinks next. ”Uh.” Opening his hand he spits out a half chewed chip into it and ignores his father's disgusted admonishment. ”Yeah, yes, uh huh.”

“This is Braeden.”

“Braeden,” Stiles repeats. “As in Braeden? Derek’s Braeden? _Braeden_ Braeden?”

“Oh, Jesus,” she says under her breath, which is when he actually believes it's her. When she next speaks her voice is vaguely muffled like she’s turned her head. ”Is he really actually that smart?”

Stiles opens his mouth to assert that he is that smart, damnit, but someone beats him to it. Derek’s voice, loud and clear, says with amusement, “Yeah, once he stops being an idiot.”

“Am I on speaker,” Stiles asks, frowning indignantly. ”Rude! You’re supposed to announce that!”

“I’m sorry, Stiles, you’re right. You’re on speaker. Happy?” Braeden deadpans.

“But to answer your question, which was _also_ rude… I am smart. I’m super smart,” he says, and stands up, dumping the entire bag of Doritos on the floor. His dad smacks his hands to his forehead and doesn’t even bother yelling at him. ”What I can’t believe is that _Derek_ is saying I’m smart.”

He holds up a finger to his Dad’s disapproving face as he walks past him into the hallway towards his room.

“When you’re done you get your ass out here and clean this up yourself,” he yells to Stiles’ back.

“I want to know everything you’ve got on Desert Wolf,” Braeden says without any kind of lead up. No _will you help me_ , no _can you please_. Just a demand. ”I know you’re looking for her.”

“How do you…” He cuts himself off, looking around his room, like he’s expecting to find a camera. ”I’m not.” He clears his throat, and then lets out a breath. ”Okay fine, nosy,” he says, lowering his voice as he sits on his bed and looks at the board in front of him. ”Malia asked me to--”

“I don’t need the whys, I need the whats,” Braeden says, interrupting him.

Stiles hears Derek laugh in the background and his mouth hangs slightly open in surprise. ”And you say _I_ have bad interpersonal skills,” Derek rumbles. Derek _laughs_? Since when does Derek _laugh_?

“Okay,” Stiles says, sitting up straighter and nodding to himself. ”Fine. I’ll tell you what I know about Desert Wolf.” He pauses. ” _If._ “

He can picture the sharklike grin that Braeden most certainly must be wearing when she responds. ”Quid pro quo, Stiles? Alright. I can play that game.”  
  


“One.”

“Oh, there’s only going to be one. I ask for one, you _get_ one.”

“Hear me out,” he says, closing his eyes and hoping his brief but intense introduction to the mercenary afforded him an accurate portrayal of what lay beneath all the sinewy muscle and roughly scarred exterior. ”One, I tell you everything I know about anything you ask, if you do the same. And two, you keep in touch.”

“Aw that’s sweet. You want me to sign your yearbook when you graduate?”

Gritting his teeth slightly he feels a flash of embarrassment and anger run through him. ”No, I want to know if and when you or Derek dies so I know how many phone calls to make the next time the shit falls down on our heads,” he bites out, poised to hang up immediately if she mocks him again.

Instead Derek’s voice comes through the phone, loud and urgent. ”What happened?”

“Nothing,” Stiles says, his heart pounding in his chest only beating faster at the knowledge that Derek can probably hear it through the lines. ”People die. People change. People fuck you over.”

There’s a protracted silence then in which Stiles hears his words repeating back at himself, so much more bitter than he’d ever meant them to come out. For months, he’s struggled with unanswerable anger and hurt. It wasn’t until this moment, right now, that he can admit -- to himself at least -- that it probably has more than a little to do with Derek’s sudden departure.

“And in your mind,” Derek says finally, his voice unexpectedly soft and gentle,”I fucked you over.”

“Yes!” Stiles lets out a huff. ”No. You just…. You died and then you fucking changed into a goddamn wolf and up and left. I just… I just want to know if you’re still someone I can call if--”

“My phone still works, Stiles. It’s the same number,” Derek says calmly.

“I’m a sarcastic bitch, Stiles. I was fucking around. We’ll keep in touch. Your plan is fair,” he hears Braeden say in the background.

Closing his eyes again he nods his head, pushing away the anger that’s all too easy to access these days. ”Okay. Fine. Wanna put me on speaker or you want me to email it to you?”

“Are we talking ten minutes or ten hours,” Derek says, and Stiles can actually see the eye roll that accompanies it.

“Gimme your email and call me back after you read it, we’ll go over it,” he says, picking up a pen. ”As if I could ever convey the knowledge I have to you in a way your little wolfy mind could understand it in under an hour.”

+

“So,” Braeden said after they'd left the Mexican border. It had been two days since it happened. He'd been wondering when she'd ask. ”Wolf, huh?”

Smiling softly he closes his eyes to the hot, blazing sun and open road and desert before them. “Apparently.”

She answers quietly, almost under her breath. “I didn't know that was real. Thought that part was myth.”

He looked at her, taking in her rueful smile. ”It's rare. My mother could do it.”

“So that's why,” she asked a bit later. ”Losing your powers, you had like… a hard reset.”

He laughs, reaching out to take her hand in his. A silent thank you for her careful digging when he knows her instinct is to grill until she gets the info she wants. Aggressively.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” He pauses, thinking. ”I think maybe I had to earn it. My mom always said that your powers don't make you the man you are. The man you are make your powers.”

She'd flicked her eyes to look at him then, meeting his eyes before turning back to the road. ”But she never explained it to you?”

Mentions of Talia were always painful and probably always would be. It felt different in this moment though, while he could still remember the warm comfort of black fur surrounding his body, the pads of his feet bare against the desert floor, the oneness he'd felt with the night. Knowing, on a deep down visceral level, that his mother had felt the same.

“She wasn't usually about saying so much as doing. But. Maybe she would have. Maybe that would have come with my 18th birthday. She died before I even thought to ask.”

He hears the sorry in her heartbeat but she doesn’t say it out loud. Only continues to hold his hand as they make their way through toward New Mexico.

It's one of his favorite traits of hers. Knowing when to just stop talking.

+

“I'm saying he’s… off.”

“Like socially awkward off, or…” Braeden says from the background, he’s always on speakerphone these days, and Stiles can hear the way the wind blows past their car. He imagines them speeding along, 100 mph down an empty dirt road, and is jealous so deeply in his gut it feels like a hand gripping his insides and squeezing.

“Like socio _pathic_ ,” he clarifies. ”He’s. I don't know. I feel like Theo's coming out of left field with all the right things to say and he. Just-- Like, his eyes don’t match his words or something.”

“It's usually me that doesn't trust anyone,” Derek says.

“No, it was just usually you saying it,” Stiles says, closing his eyes and resting his head on the cool sheetrock of his bedroom wall. ”Scott’s so… _nice_. And good. And. He wants to see the good in people, and he looks at me like--”

“You’re an asshole for waiting for the truth to finally reveal itself,” Derek finishes. ”Yeah, I got that look a lot.”

“I wish you were here,” Stiles says and then freezes, because he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Clenching his jaw he waits for the mocking jabs to come.

Instead Derek says, soft enough Stiles isn't even sure he said it, “...Sorry.”

Stiles swallows thickly, clenching the pencil in his hand hard enough that he can hear it start to crack.

“Yeah. It was easier when you were here,” he says. ”I could kick back and be sarcastic, and you could be the asshole who didn’t trust anyone.”

“What, you don’t miss me too?” Braeden asks, and Stiles grins and thanks her silently for the easy deflection.

He laughs, snarking something about missing her fighting skills and twin barrelled shotguns, but it doesn't come out as light as he’d wanted it to because his heart’s pounding in his chest and he can hear an echo from a long time ago.

_ “Hypervigilance,” he’d said, and Morell had answered, “If you're going through hell, keep going.” _

When though, he wants to know. He’s been going and going and goddamn going. So when is hell going to be over for him. When?

He hangs up before he actually asks the question.

+

It's actually two months into it when Braeden finally asks Derek what his plan is.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye, putting down the book he’d been reading. ”Getting tired of me?”

“Not tired,” Braeden says, reaching over to flick the radio down a few notches so she doesn’t have to raise her voice. ”Just trying to figure out if you’re in for the long haul, or if I’m gonna be dropping you off at a train station headed for Beacon Hills anytime soon.” She looks at him, half smile quirking on her face. ”I like knowing what I’m looking at.”

“I don’t plan on going back,” he says, taking in the road signs pointing this way and that way for various food and gas stations. ”Don’t have to stay with you either if you prefer.”

An hour later, after she’d pulled into the parking lot of a McDonald’s, she turns off the car and faces him. ”I speak my mind, Derek.”

He nods. ”I know. I’ve always appreciated that about you.”

“So believe me when I say, if you staying pisses me off or bothers me, I’ll let you know.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the car door, twisting the keys out of the ignition. ”Like I said, I just like to know what I’m looking at.”

After they emptied their bladders and were waiting in line for what passed for a fresh salad, Derek looped his fingers through Braeden’s belt loops and pulled her back against him. ”I’d like to stay. I like being with you. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to, and I don’t know how long you’ll want me to, but... I’d like to stay.”

Her hands covered his, and her shoulders relaxed as she leaned into him. “Good,” she said. ”Then stay.”

+

Stiles is so used to being the one that calls. He’s used to hearing Braeden’s voice speak first when he picks up the phone. Soused to it, it throws him off when it’s Derek’s number that pops up on his screen and Derek’s voice he hears when he answers.

“You got the pictures,” Derek asks, no preamble, no hello, no niceties. Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Uh yeah, I got them. Kinda hard to forget opening a few texts messages to a bloody gory mess. Tell your girlfriend maybe a trigger warning next time.”

“You gotta stop,” Derek says, lowering his voice. ”Stop digging into this. Stop picking at the… pulling at the...”

“Strings, Derek, pulling on the _strings_ ,” Stiles says, hand coming up to pinch at the bridge of his nose as the beginnings of a tension headache start pounding. ”It’s a metaphor for--”

“I don’t give a shit what it’s a metaphor for. She’s dangerous,” Derek growls, and it makes Stiles stop because it’s only Derek on the phone right now. No wind noise, no background echo, and no Braeden laughing or snarking in the pauses. ”You need to stop.”

Stiles lays back in his bed, resting his arm over his eyes. ”I appreciate the concern--”

“This isn’t look both ways before you cross the street, Stiles. This is _she will kill you_. She will stab you in the gut, decapitate you, and string you up just to get her message across.” Stiles swallows past the nausea roiling in his stomach, but Derek’s not finished. ”Or no, she’ll do it to Lydia. Or your Dad. Because she’s sick, Stiles. Stop pulling the string. She's Kate-level bad news.”

Stiles blinks in shock, because Kate isn’t something that Derek ever brings up. Not _ever._ ”You’re the one who told Braeden to bring me into this,” Stiles counters, “ _You_ are who asked me to pull on this goddamn string.”

“And now I’m telling you to stop. You’re a sitting duck, Stiles, and when she figures out how we’re closing in on her-- And she will, Stiles, she’ll figure it out-- and when she does, she’s going to come for you.”

Stiles hands clutch into fists and he grits his teeth together. ”Good,” he shouts finally. ”Good, then we’ve got her scared, and scared people fuck up, Derek. Now’s not the time to take the pressure off, now’s the time to double up!”

“Fuck! Do you never listen? Why do you never listen to me? Is it because it’s me, or do you just not listen _period?_ Are you too fucking hard-headed to listen to _anyone--_ “

“She wants her found,” Stiles interrupts, yelling loudly now. Any minute his dad’s going to walk in and ask him what the hell’s going on, but he can’t stop himself. ”Malia does not ask for anything, Derek. She never _asks_ for anything, but she asked for this. She wants _this_.”

“And we will find her, but I want you to duck out.”

“So I’m supposed to bow out, but Braeden--”

“I’m here to watch Braeden’s back, Stiles. I can’t protect you,” Derek yells back before quieting his voice again. ”I can’t be there to have your back, and it sounds to me like you don’t have many people watching your back these days, so I want you to quit.”

“Fuck you,” Stiles grits out, squeezing his eyes shut against the painful truth in the statement.

“Just live your life, Stiles. It’s your senior year. Tell Malia we’re on it. _We’ll_ find her. _We’ll_ take care of her.”

“People have my back, Derek. We’ve been… it’s been… they have my back, when it comes down to it, Derek, they’ll have my--”

“I’m just saying this doesn’t have to be your fight. You weren’t there, you didn’t see it. Those photos don’t even-- Just. Let us do this.”

Stiles breathes out through his nose. ”Braeden tell you to give a shit all of a sudden? That what’s happening right now? Did she tell you you were supposed to worry about poor, little, breakable human Stiles?”

“Braeden’s not _here_ ,” Derek grits out. ”She’s out getting food, and she didn’t tell me shit. Far as she’s concerned, you’re the source to end all sources. She’s gonna offer to pay you to be her source for this, and everything after as far as she’s concerned. So no, she didn’t tell me shit. _I’m_ saying I’m worried. Me, Stiles.”

“You,” Stiles asks, voice warbling just slightly from shock and emotions he wasn’t expecting at all to crop up. Touched and pissed at the same time, with just a hint of charmed. ”Big guy. You. Worried about me?”

“Shut _up,_ Stiles. Just.” 

There’s a pause and then Stiles hears noise in the background, rattling of ice, crinkling of paper, and then what has to be a kiss on Derek’s cheek. Braeden, then. Braeden’s back.

“Do what you want, just be careful,” he finishes with, and then hangs up before Stiles can say anything back.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr here under [@lovethesnark](http://lovethesnark.tumblr.com). 
> 
> Fanfiction Website  
> MOST of my fic is not on AO3, though all of my H5O and beyond is as AO3 didn't exist yet and it was too much to archive. It can be found on my website at [LoveTheSnark.com](http://www.lovethesnark.com).


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